Sightseeing & detours on the path of enlightenment

Daily Prompt: 1984

You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.

I awake in a room, that seems to stretch forever. There is a diffused light that leaves no shadow, and as I sit up I notice I’m surrounded by people. At first as I look around I notice, that they are all smiling, and happy to see me. I see my grandparents there, my parents,my brothers from my dads first marriage, aunts uncles, cousins, friends from when I was a child who I haven’t seen since, as well as current friends, and even bloggers who I have come to know from WordPress. I ask my mom where am I? She tells me that the where is not important, rather it is the why, that needs to be answered. She then motions for my grandfather from my dad’s side to move forward, he says he never got to meet me, having died several years before I was born. His appearance is a mixture of western and Chinese befitting someone who travelled to Canada to build a railway, that helped to build a country, that also helped build his family, back in the old country. He starts by saying he is glad I followed the Buddha’s path, however he had hoped I would have become a doctor or engineer, as I had the ability to be either. My grandfather from my mother’s side who came from the Ukraine, to homestead, and build a better future for his family, says he is glad I keep the family traditions from the Eastern Orthodox church, but, he wishes I had followed the Christian tradition. Down through all the people there, they all have something nice to say about me, and all add a wish that I had taken a different path, than the one I had chosen at some point. I ask where, I am, and everyone says at once, it does not matter. Then an elderly man walks forward, and says that I still have much to learn, and that where is not the question, I need to learn the answer to. He says that why, is one that will not be answered either, nor how, or even when. Finally sensing my exasperation, he smiles and says, all that studying and meditation and still patience is not yet your strength, yet there is hope. I ask who he is, and as he smiles, and turns I notice through his thin shirt, a tattoo of nine spires across his back, exactly where I had planned to have the same one done, for years. His words fading as he walks away through the crowd, cause me to focus on what he is saying, and the last words I hear are it is who you are and who you will become that is the question. I have always been harder on myself than others, so facing myself from the future, would be unnerving!

I would agree! I remember talking to a friend once. I mentioned that I wouldn’t want to talk to someone like me. And she said, ‘well, then you cannot face yourself can you?’ It was a spontaneous and very casual response – but it made me wonder…